On the phone from Australia, the antipodean accent she keeps hidden away in movies out on full display, Cate Blanchett can't remember exactly how long she spent in San Francisco filming Woody Allen's “Blue Jasmine.”

“It felt like forever. But it can't be, because Woody makes everything for about $5.99,” she said with a laugh.

“Blue Jasmine” (opening Friday in San Antonio) is Woody Allen's 44th movie in 47 years and Blanchett's first time working with the prolific writer-director. The film, which cuts between San Francisco in the current day and New York in flashback, follows Jasmine (Blanchett) as she retreats west to stay with her sister after a mental breakdown.

It marks a departure for Allen from the European whimsy of his latest work and back toward the darker family dramas he explored in movies such as “September” and “Interiors.”

After jogging her memory, Blanchett concludes that she spent five weeks in San Francisco. She says that she found the mixture of grime and glamour in the city intriguing.

“Blue Jasmine,” bouncing in time between New York and San Francisco, creates an interesting contrast between the two worlds, although Blanchett said she doesn't think Allen was trying to make a specific point with the comparison.

“If anything, it shows that a certain financial aspiration and pressure in parts of New York, if you can survive it, allows you to forget how the other half lives. But you can't do that in San Francisco. It's all just right there,” she said.

As Blanchett put bluntly, a call from Woody Allen is one you'll take. She admitted that in a shallow sense, she felt starring in one of his movies would be a “nice notch on the belt.” But, she said, when the script arrived, it was brilliant, and any Allen film carries with it the promise of an interesting cast.

Blanchett's theater background prepared her for working with Allen. All the direction is written into the script, she said. He does few takes, no reshoots and little postproduction work.

“It's like curtain time, one take, let's go. What you do on the day is what you've got to work with. It requires a strong level of focus and commitment,” she said.

There's an element of filmmaking for Allen, Blanchett saw, that appears excruciating for him.

“I think it's hard for him to listen to his own words,” she said. “He writes things from the inside out, which is probably why he's acted in so many of his own movies.”

Blanchett said she found herself relating to Allen, the contradictions between his compulsion to make movies and his desire to remove himself from the spotlight, and the tensions between his heavily publicized private life and being such a private person.

“I understand those urges,” she said.

The character of Jasmine gave Blanchett a chance to play someone less sympathetic, struggling against mental illness yet serving actively as her own worst enemy, endearing one moment and alienating and dishonest the next.

It was an interesting character to unwrap, Blanchett said. Jasmine's judgment and treatment of her sister (Hawkins) is one of the defining tensions of “Blue Jasmine” and suggests larger, unfixable flaws within her character.

“There's so much dysfunction within Jasmine,” Blanchett said. “The need to survive is so paramount, it makes her do cruel things.”

Whether Jasmine is ultimately a good person doesn't factor into the acting equation for Blanchett. She said that she and Allen would disagree about her character. To Allen, Jasmine was simply mad, but to Blanchett it's not that simple.

“When you are damaged, you do damage,” she said. “I try not to judge the characters I play. Jasmine is still someone, like anyone else, who wants to be saved.”